Modern consumer electronic devices such as cell phones, portable game systems, cameras, etc., are memory-intensive. The memory-intensive nature of these devices has led to an increase in the use of flash memory, since flash memory is ideally suited for use in many modern consumer electronic devices. For certain types of flash memory, reading from the memory can be a relatively fast operation, whereas writing to the memory is slow, and therefore computationally expensive. In addition, repeated writes to a block of flash memory can shorten the lifespan of the memory. Also, since flash memory is often included in battery operated, portable electronic devices, flash memory is prone to experiencing frequent, unexpected power interruptions, which threaten the integrity of the information stored in the flash memory.